Kotovnik

Nepeta cataria

Kotovnik is considered a weed plant. The smell resembles the aroma of geranium, rose and lemon.

Beekeepers appreciate the cat as as a good honey plant. It's a herb that cats really like.

Description: perennial to 1 m in height, blooms from June to September. Stalk pubescent, branching. Leaves petiolate, triangular-ovate with a large-peaked edge 3-5 cm

long and / -4 cm wide, densely pubescent. Due to the pubescence the leaves are velvety and have a greyish-green matt shade. Flowers are white, rarely pale pink, collected in the whorls of a spicate inflorescence.

Ingredients: contains essential oils with nepet-lactone, geraniol, citral and lemonet, non-pectic acid, thymol.

Cultivation: a cat is a light-loving plant. Propagated by seeds as planting in the soil, and through seedlings, as well as by dividing the bush. Seedlings are grown in the same way as seedlings of basil. Sowing a cat in the spring in the beds, planting seedlings are carried out in the spring at a distance of 30 x 30 cm. Perhaps growing in tubs.

The plant does not require special care. Watering in general is not required, except for particularly arid periods, planting the cat is fertilized with compost in the spring. Mulching brings good results.

Make a toy for your cat that she does not want to part with. Sew a rag mouse and fill it with the dried leaves of a cat, adding a little dry root of valerian

Collection: repeated cutting of fragrant grass during the season is possible, in dried form it is used for making toys for cats.

. Medicinal properties: in folk medicine, the cat is used as water tinctures assoothing agent and with headaches, liver disease, jaundice, dyspnea, with cough and anemia, to stimulate appetite.

Application: as an essential oil raw material, the cat's cottage has been cultivated recently. It is used in the manufacture of vermouth, soft drinks, for the aromatization of shampoos and toilet water. Fresh and dried leaves and inflorescences of the cat are widely used for perfuming tea, vinegar, cooking sauces, salads, for flavoring meat and fish dishes. Water infusion of a cat is used as an insecticide.

Cat litter, or catnip ( Nepeta cataria), contains essential oils and is used in this connection as an essential oil plant. Siberian catfish ( N. sibirica) and caterpillar caterpillar ( N. grandiflora) are very beautiful, they are often bred as ornamental plants